Peace Comes to Turkey

On Thursday afternoon, in front of a crowd so large it surged over fences and up scaffolding, peace was declared in Turkey. A letter from Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned founder of the P.K.K. (Kurdistan Worker’s Party, the armed Kurdish resistance) had been carried from the island prison where he is being held to Newroz Park on the outskirts of Diyarbakir, where it was read—first in Kurdish and then in Turkish—from a stage positioned at the tip of an asphalt field that had been hand-painted with the Kurdish colors and atop which the crowd waved smaller red, yellow, and green flags. It was Newroz, the Kurdish New Year and the start of spring. “Today a new period is beginning,” the letter read. “From a period of armed resistance, a door has been opened to democratic struggle.” Later, when the speaker read Ocalan’s question, “Will you answer my call,” the crowd answered by holding aloft emphatic v-for-victory signs.

For nearly thirty years, the P.K.K. and the Turkish Army have been fighting in the remote mountains on the border of Turkey and Iraq, along the roads that connect those mountains to Turkish towns, and sometimes inside of those towns. Over forty thousand people on both sides, including civilians, have died. Ocalan has been in prison since 1999, and the day marked his return, if only in a sense. It was met with wild exuberance. Many of the people at the rally carried flags that featured only his face against a canary-yellow background. His portrait swayed above the crowd, suspended between two lampposts; another was draped over the stage rafters; another to the rear of the stage. When the M.C. led a chant of “Long live Newroz,” the crowd answered back, using a nickname for Ocalan, “Long live ‘Apo.’” The slogan for the day put Ocalan first: “Freedom for Ocalan, Status for Kurds.” It didn’t matter that the guest of honor was a no-show. On Newroz, which typically ushers in a renewed vow of P.K.K. resistance, the absences are as important as the attendees. A red chair labelled for Sakine Cansiz, one of the Kurdish women murdered in Paris early this year, sat unoccupied in the front row of the V.I.P. bleachers. Her photo and the photos of the two young women killed along with her were emblazoned stage left. As in years past, Newroz was about remembering the dead; this year it was also about preventing more deaths.

Ocalan’s letter went on. “We have sacrificed our youth. We have paid heavily, but not in vain. Fighting gave the Kurdish identity back to Kurds.… But blood spills from the chest of youth no different from Kurdish as from Turkish. This is a new period. Instead of arms, we have ideas.” The words thumped at full volume from dangling speakers. The crowd chanted “Apo.” Young men climbed the stage rafters to drape a giant, slightly battered Kurdish flag over the top. Rows of revelers reached the very back of the park, where still more people tried to climb over the fence. Farther away the rally morphed into a fair. Families sat on picnic blankets, eating sticky pastries and pushing their kids on portable metal swings, half-listening to the distant pronouncement of Ocalan, who, as one woman told me later, “is the only one we trust.”

In 2012, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.) banned the Newroz celebration. Fighting between the P.K.K. and the army had been especially intense, and cancelling Newroz was both a punishment and an attempt to prevent more violence. But people gathered anyway on the expansive fields surrounding locked Newroz Park, and the day devolved into demonstrations and clashes with the police, who saturate Diyarbakir’s streets. This year’s Newroz was both larger and more peaceful, and the police sat leaning against their armored vehicles a few blocks from the park, looking bored.

It was clear that day that an overwhelming majority of Kurds support an end to the violence. But among the crowd at Newroz Park on Thursday were perhaps a million different specific expectations. Two women from Roboski carried framed photographs of their sons, killed by the Turkish military in 2011 while they smuggled goods from Iraq into Turkey. The mothers told me what they expected now that the years of fighting were over: “We want them to find out who killed our sons.” Others wanted to be able perform Kurdish dances and wear Kurdish clothing. They wanted to be able to speak Kurdish in school and defend themselves in Kurdish in court. They wanted to be able to gather publicly without fear of arrest or aggression from the police. They wanted the existence of Kurds acknowledged in the constitution. They wanted some industry to move to southeast Turkey. Peace, they hoped, would create an environment in which these rights could, at the very least, be discussed. Far from the stage I climbed a grassy hill and asked an older man named Habib what he expected. “There’s never enough money,” he said. “I want a government job.” Nearby, Fatma sat smoking a cigarette. “Fighting makes everyone’s life very difficult,” she said. “If there is peace, we can speak our language.” It was understood that, in addition to all of this, everyone also wanted Ocalan to be released from prison.

Alongside the hope was urgency. This is not the first time Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tried to solve the so-called “Kurdish issue,” but people felt certain it would be the last. Newroz was as much a welcoming of peace as it was a farewell to the P.K.K.—a bittersweet moment for a community that hates war but is grateful to those who waged it. The parting would not be easy. Without the authority of the P.K.K., Kurds felt suddenly at the mercy of a Turkish politician who had disappointed them in the past. The Kurdish people, they told me, would not be fooled again. This skepticism was expressed the loudest by a few P.K.K. youth who took the stage, all but their eyes obscured by scarves. “Today we don’t trust the A.K.P.,” they said. “But we trust our movement, and we trust our leader… We would like to warn the A.K.P. that they shouldn’t hinder the process. We will not accept any conspiracy. If they conspire, they will know who is their friend and who is their enemy.”

Distrust on both sides is one of the major challenges to real reform. The circumstances of a changing Middle East—war in Syria, wealth in Iraqi Kurdistan—have made peace with the Kurds necessary for Turkey, and Erdogan’s ambitions for the Presidency are surely a factor as well. But Erdogan has not often sounded like a leader intent on negotiation with the Kurds. Just this past November, when Kurdish prisoners were two months into a hunger strike, Erdogan responded by suggesting that Turkey reinstate the death penalty. He has consistently promised the Turkish public that the Army would defeat the P.K.K. militarily, and he responded to the Newroz celebration by complaining about the lack of Turkish flags (there were, as far as I could tell, exactly zero). He has often been criticized for viewing the Kurdish issue only as one of national security, not human rights. This perspective is problematic if it means a solution, for Erdogan, stops at a cease-fire. His reaction to Newroz—a day in which Kurdish rebellion is expressed through their culture, which includes their flag—seemed to confirm that criticism; if Erdogan does have insight into the cultural solidarity underlying the armed resistance, he’s not prepared to show it.

On the other side, there is Ocalan, and his unparalleled power among his people. That power can benefit the Kurdish community—as in last year, when he called off the hunger strike, and now, as the bearer of peace—but can also be a detriment. Ocalan’s freedom comes first in the Newroz slogan, and first in the minds of most Kurds. It is perhaps ironic that his call for a democratic solution so vastly overshadowed the democratically elected B.D.P. (pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party) officials standing on stage during the reading of his letter. Every movement needs a leader, but the worship of Ocalan is disconcerting in part because it is so familiar. Fervor for Ocalan is not unlike that for Ataturk, and Kurdish nationalism is as strong as Turkish nationalism. Freedom for Ocalan looks remote. If peace depends on it, then peace may not last.

The next day, along with four other journalists, I met Osman Baydemir, the mayor of Diyarbakir. He had been up late at a Newroz reception, and he was tired. “We have witnessed a historical Newroz,” he said. “Millions of people at the same moment were shouting for peace.” Baydemir, like his colleagues in the B.D.P., has not had an easy time in office. Two court cases against him have resulted in large fines, but the financial burden is minor compared to the threat of prison. Since 2009, thousands of Kurds have been imprisoned for alleged ties to the P.K.K., and because of this it’s unclear how much Kurds trust the democracy they welcomed on Thursday. But Newroz, as Baydemir knows, was only the first step of a very complicated process. It’s impossible to predict whether peace will last, whether Kurds will get what they want, and whether Erdogan will change his mind. “The only thing we know now,” Baydemir said, “is that as long as we have war, people will die.”

Photograph by Zeynep Akinci.

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